Looking ahead to 2019: debate about debates rekindles

If you thought the 2015 election’s ‘debate on the debates’ was done and over with, think again.

Having endured what became a high-stakes game of political chicken a marathon-length election, Ottawa’s politicos and media executives are already looking toward what to do when the next election rolls around.

Academics, media professionals and a few political staffers met Saturday in Ottawa in a bid to better understand the brinksmanship that led to the Conservatives and then the New Democratic Party walking away from the traditional national debates, opting instead for a series of branded media events. From looking back, the participants, invited by the Institute for Research in Public Policy and Carleton University’s journalism and political management programs, began looking for ways to ensure Canadians are better served in the future.

Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells, who moderated the Maclean’s leaders debate and has argued that the consortium had an unfair monopoly on the debates, defended the Maclean’s debate as a journalistic success – but said he expects the next election will return to what’s been done in the past.

“My hunch is that the broadcast consortium is going to be the host of substantially the only debates in the next election because inertia in this country is a fiercely powerful thing,” he said.

“My hope is that we go further towards an atomized, pluralistic, mayhem-infested free-for-all of different organizations offering very different debates in very different formats at very different scales.”

He noted the audience numbers were lower than what the consortium might have pulled in (the Maclean’s had a viewership of 3.8 million viewers, but the 2011 English language consortium debates brought in 10.6 million).

But Wells is also OK with that.

He thinks multiple debates can have a cumulative effect in attracting audiences, that having more and varied debates is better, and, thanks to social media, “you don’t have to see something to see it.”

The CBC’s Editor in chief Jennifer McGuire, also the chair of the broadcast consortium, said while Canadians gained from having more debates with varied styles and editorial framing, they also lost something by only having “a fairly narrow audience getting access” to them and “certainly not the broad impact they’ve had in the past.”

She defended the consortium as the main organizing body, saying it’s not a monopoly but a partnership designed to “create a moment in the country where no matter where you turn you have access, almost forced access, to the conversation about the future of this country.”

McGuire spoke of a frustrating experience dealing with parties’ partisan calculations in negotiating the consortium debate, which eventually collapsed after the Conservatives and then the NDP backed out.

“I have a book in me about this whole experience,” McGuire joked.

In organizing the next debate(s), a whole slate of questions will need to be answered: which leaders get invited, is the quality high enough, should organizing them become institutionalized? If more debates are better, how many can be had if a “normal” length election campaign is called?

When it comes to the question of a network broadcasting another organization’s individually organized debate, it raises issues of control over the programming choices, costs and branding.

The conference organizers will produce a report, expected to be released early next year, laying out some of the points of view and possible policy options.

How to organize the next debates is something on the federal government’s agenda as well.

The mandate letter for Maryam Monsef, minister of democratic institutions, laid out instructions to consider whether the government should move to create a commission to organize the debates:

“Bring forward options to create an independent commissioner to organize political party leaders’ debates during future federal election campaigns, with a mandate to improve Canadians’ knowledge of the parties, their leaders, and their policy positions.”

Rudyard Griffiths, host and organizer of the Munk Debates, had called for an independent commission to organize them next time, saying organizing them this time around was “a lot of herding cats on everybody’s part.”

But whether the government actually does anything about it is another thing – tinkering too much with the process could just as well make things worse and appear as political interference in the democratic process.

With a secure majority and a set election date for October 2019, one thing is for certain: expect the debate on debates to produce, well, more debate.